228 THE GAME FOWL. 



death : although one does see a few thorough-bred birds now 

 and then, and hears faint rumours of an occasional amicable 

 trial of strength.* 



There is a very graphic account of a main, conducted secun- 

 dum artem in by -gone days, to be found in Elaine's <( Rural 

 Sports." But Cock-fighting is of older date than modern 

 fashionable refinement, and may possibly survive it. a The 

 Alexandrians," says Statius, quoted by the Quarterly Review, 

 " were indifferent soldiers, but the best of singers, and only 

 surpassed by their compatriots, the Alexandrian fighting Cocks, 

 as an appendage to Roman supper-parties." We have heard 

 of a nobleman of the old school having a few couple of Cocks 

 up into the drawing-room, as an agreeable interruption to the 

 tiresome rubbers of whist. But before noblemen and their 



* I am informed that, in certain places in Warwickshire, and in 

 the adjoining county of Staffordshire, the effects of Cock-fighting 

 still continue to be impoverishing, demoralizing, and degrading to 

 its followers, clothing them and their families in rags. It is no un- 

 common thing, among the working people of that district, to stake 

 the whole of their week's hard earnings upon a single fight. What 

 must be the Avretchedness and misery brought upon the families thus 

 deprived of their only means of subsistence ? Cock-fighting, with 

 these results, is a terrible evil, for other reasons than mere senti- 

 mental talk about its cruelty. People can go and see a poor girl, or 

 a reckless man, whom they believe to be endowed with immortal 

 souls, daily expose themselves to be destroyed in a moment by lions 

 and tigers, but they are too delicate to witness the shedding of a 

 Cock's blood. It is the gambling which is the great immorality ; of 

 course, the assembling of so many low characters must be dangerous 

 to the well-being of society. But the local magistrates surely have 

 power, if they choose to exert it, of legally putting down such gam- 

 bling, and preventing such assemblies ; and the police would be 

 better employed in preventing such ruinous infringements of the law, 

 than in many of the cases on which they try their 'prentice hand, in 

 a desperate effort to obtain their maiden conviction. 



